How to Control eBay FEES

Are you surprised after you finish creating an eBay listing that the fees are out of sight? There are so many choices on the listing enhancements. But, how do you know how many enhancements to use before they cut into your profit?

With careful planning you can cut the listing costs. All the fees can not be avoided, however, they can be reduced. So many of these extra enhancements don't help promote your sales, they only eat into your profit. So plan before you list....know the cost of each enhancement....and use foresight or a record keeping system to try to figure out if the specific enhancement really increases your sales.

Fees that are Unavoidable

All insertion fees cannot be avoided. This is the way eBay stays in business. eBay uses these fees to keep the hardware and software maintained. It funds its user services and trys to keep them up to date. These fees fund new features so eBay stays ahead of other online websites and auction sites.  One of these features is a tool known as the Turbo Lister. You can try some of the free online auction services, but I have not found any that has as much traffic or success as eBay.

Some of eBay Listing Enhancements

• Title Enhancement
• Title Enhancements can be bold or highlighted, etc. Cost $1.00.
• Special Icons
• Special Icons are birthday cake, a Christmas tree, a firecracker, a gift, etc. Cost $1.00.
• Home Page Featured Placement
• Most expensive. Usually profitable for items that will gain you $1,000 or more in profits.
• Cross-Category Listing
• Cross-Category listings appear in 2 categories at the same time. Double your fees.
• Gallery Listings
• Gallery listings appear in the picture gallery on the search page. Cost $0.35.

All these little enhancements take away from your profit margin. With the title enhancements buyers don't pay attention to the style you have chosen. Sometimes it is self-defeating, in that the buyer may think the item is too expensive. Choosing the correct "hit words" that the buyers will put in their searches is the best way to get your customers.

As for the Special Icons, let's use reason....how many times have you searched for an item and the little firecracker or birthday cake made you click the buy button? Again, its the keywords that you use in the title that will pull in your customers.

The glittery Home Page Feature as I said before is the most expensive listing fee. If you are not expecting to make more than a thousand dollars, then this feature is not a necessity. Save your insertion fees and use the keywords to get yourself noticed.

Since the Cross-Categories promotion is almost double insertion fees is this really a benefit to you? Is your item going to get that much more profit because you listed in two categories? How will you know which category sold your item? Determine the best category to put your item and list under that category.

Gallery listing photos is a matter of opinion. If your item is going to bring in a substantial profit, then use it. I know I like to see the picture before I click on the item listing, but that is to save myself time. However, if you have a good title with keywords that will draw your attention that is what will get your buyer!

A Few Last Fees to Consider

Not all insertion fees are a costly waste. In fact, some insertion fees can keep you from making a uneventful profit loss. Just as it makes sense to use the right, carefully chosen keywords, it is profitable to use certain listing enhancements. At times the situation may call for you to use them.

The listing enhancement known as the Reserve Price is good to use when you need to protect your investment. If you are uncertain that your bid price will reach the price you intend, then by all means use the reserve price enhancement.

Another enhancement is knowing what amount the Opening Bid should start with. If you know the demand for your item will get your opening bid, then start your price there and don't use the reserve price. If you had place a reserve price for $200 that would cost you about a $1.30. So, by not using the reserve price you will save that.

Another feature that many seller overlook or don't know about is the Relist enhancement feature. If you have an auction that does not sell, you can relist that item. The listing fees will be refunded to you, if your item sells the second time. What is neat about this enhancement is that you can examine your listing and change the title, the category, the description, or the shipping information and it will not cost you a thing.

The last enhancement that I will discuss in this guide is the online payment methods. Even though these online payment sites charge us substantial fees to use them, it gets more buyers to you. Places such as PayPal and Billpoint offer the buyer the convenience of getting the buyers payment to you. These sites allow buyers to pay with credit cards. Otherwise they would have to send cash or check or money order to the seller, which is not only inconvenient, but takes at least a week to get to the seller. By offering the payment method of PayPal, sellers get higher bids which is a relatively low cost compared to the chance of receiving a personal check that we hope will clear the bank.

So, in conclusion if we keep our listings simple by limiting our enhancements then our listing fees will be cheaper. In the final end our profits will be higher. If we create a template using HTML then we can save it and reuse the template and this will save us time and money.